Introduction

A Special Section Guest-Edited by Michelle Segar

This special section of Findings offers a whole-body, whole-life approach to health as we age. So much of what we’re
told about health and healthy aging is negative and/or punitive: Stop smoking, stop
eating fat, exercise more. Drawing on new research across many fields, this “Guide
to Thriving” asks whether we might better foster the healthy outcomes most of us seek
by taking a different approach—one that emphasizes human functioning and well-being
as the primary reason and motivation for self-care, rather than the desire to prevent
or treat disease. These questions have never been more important, as nationally and
globally we search for ways to create healthier populations and lower health care
costs.

Equally important, new research suggests that factors like personal growth, self-acceptance,
purpose, and positive emotions build both intra- and interpersonal resources and protect
people against the health challenges that often accompany social inequality and aging.
Psychologist Carol Ryff writes, “To the extent that individuals can cultivate skills
for seeing and savoring the positive in themselves and their lives, much in the same
way that people can learn to practice good nutrition, they would have tools at their
disposal to draw on in times of distress or adversity.” In addition to continuing
to advance policies to eradicate the racial and economic disparities that contribute
to illness, as a society we should also strive to create new policies, environments,
and opportunities that promote human functioning and positive emotions. — Michelle Segar

Michelle Segar, PhD, MPH ’97, guest-edits this special section offering a whole-body,
whole-mind approach to lifelong healthy living. A behavioral sustainability researcher,
Segar is the associate director of the Sport, Health, and Activity Research and Policy
Center and a 2013 fellow with the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation
at the University of Michigan. A frequent speaker on methods to rebrand health as
well being, she is at work on a book about using these new ideas to improve behavioral
sustainability in health-care and health-promotion contexts.